Fitzgerald, F. Scott Final

The author F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in 1896 in
St. Paul, Minnesota; he studied at Princeton University, and in 1917 joined the
army. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre of Alabama. Together with other famous
writers of the twenties such as Ernest Hemingway he settled in Paris for some
time: they are referred to as the "lost generation". From 1937 on Fitzgerald
lived and worked in Hollywood; he died there (with one book unfinished "The Last
Tycoon") in 1940.His books deal with the idealism
and the disillusionment of the post- World War I decade (cf. Brockhaus 1988,
vol.7 p.346 F. Scott Fitzgerald) as well as with the struggle of society to find
spiritual happiness besides the material wealth (cf. DiBacco p.525). Fitzgerald
is often described as "central to the American twenties" (Long p.177), as
chronicler (cf. Thies p.585) or historian (cf. Long p.177) of the golden years,
"He named the Jazz age" (Long p.177). His greatest
and most famous novel "The Great Gatsby" was published in 1925 and is a perfect
example of his talent to describe social circumstances.We can find a lot about
“Class in the USA in the 1920s” in his
novel.In order to show evidence for my hypothesis
that

Fitzgerald realistically describes
typical representatives of the existing social classes in the post war decade.

I have to concentrate on a few specific examples.
Considering all the social classes as well as the representatives that are
mentioned in the novel would go beyond the scope of this research paper.
I therefore choose Wilson as an example of the
impoverished people of those days, because in the course of my research I found
this class to be widely ignored by numerous sources. Myrtle as well as her
friends and relatives will be neglected in this context. Due to their notion of
being superior to Wilson (cf. Fitzgerald p.32 l.4-22), they do not appear
stereotypical of their own class.Nick Carraway,
the narrator, is disregarded as well: although he is a main character in the
text his function in respect to the novel is to be a neutral observer of the
ongoing events. We should keep in mind that it is obviously not Fitzgerald's
intention to criticise the behaviour of middle class
people.I select Tom and Daisy Buchanan to
represent the established rich, the leisure class, since they provide a contrast
to the still poor Wilson and the ex-poor
Gatsby.The latter I describe to show the class
that, in most historical reviews, is regarded as the most typical of the
twenties and, of course, because he is the hero of the
story.

1. Social Classes in the
Nineteen-Twenties

The twenties are often
referred to as "The Roaring Twenties" or "The Gilded Age", because of the
prosperity that flourished everywhere. But actually, various social classes
(co-)existed during this decade. Three of them will be described more closely.

1.1 The Established
Rich

People that were born wealthy (e.g. by
inheritance of large family estates and savings) will be referred to as the
"established rich". Their fortune originated primarily from the time prior to
World War I. Scarcely anybody made a fortune during the Great War (only a
handful of profiteers and producers of weapons and explosives such as the
DuPont family of Wilmington Delaware [Brockhaus 1988, vol.7 p.39: DuPont]).
Business was widely under government control to prevent any irregularities
inside the United States. Profit was reduced to a secondary objective, as the
survival of the nation became the primary goal. In the years before the war,
huge trusts with monopolistic ambitions had dominated commerce. The founders of
those trusts had often earned several million dollars during their lives. The
most famous of them had been John D. Rockefeller, who had become the richest
person in the world as chairman of the Standard Oil Trust (S.O., with the
trademark Esso®worldwide, today in the US
Exxon®). The extended family
clans of those people and their business allies to a high degree made up the
mentioned class.

1.2 The
Poor

Often disregarded is the situation, even
the mere existence of the poor in the "Golden
Decade".Prior to the economic boom, there was the
post war depression of 1918. The high demand for lifestyle goods could not be
met by the industry, needing time to adjust their facilities. Tanks and machine
guns were no longer in demand; cars and electric appliances were in want. In
consequence, inflation rates went up (cf. DiBacco p.511). The slump was under
control in 1919 and business began to pick up momentum, but the high cost of
living remained (cf. Sellers p.331). Industrial workers, who had worked hard to
supply the military with weapons and thus supported the American soldiers, now
started to go on strike to obtain higher wages. Employers fired many of them,
especially those who had joined labour unions (cf. DiBacco p.511). Those fired
where often not given a second chance, they found themselves in a cruel
situation: either they had to set up their own business - always a risky
adventure - or they had to work for even lower wages. At the end of 1920 another
short recession followed. During such inconstant
economical circumstances, many people lost their money and went bankrupt. Even
in the glorious twenties, only a minority was privileged to live the American
Dream and ascend from poverty to wealth (cf. the dishwasher to millionaire
stereotype in Hollywood movies, e.g. the early Chaplin films). Hence the
unfortunate silent majority lived in suburbs of the big cities, merely trying to
survive while others accumulated enormous fortunes by
mergers.Furthermore when real wages for workers
rose, this was "not in proportion to the increase of productivity and profit"
(Sellers p.338). Consequently, individual purchase power even decreased although
wages were raised: hence most factory workers remained in a position of poverty
(cf. Sellers p.338). They earned less than half as much as would have been
necessary to provide for "universal well-being" (Sellers p.338). The
maldistribution of income in the United States was worse than ever before "the
top 0.1 percent of American families in 1929 had an aggregate income equal to
that of the bottom 42 percent."(McElvaine p.38)
Hence even though there is not much fiction or
non-fiction literature (with the possible exception of Upton Sinclair and
Sinclair Lewis [cf. Daiches p.97ff]) about these impoverished people of the
twenties, there was a significant number of them. As Burl Noggle put it when
writing about the role of the women in the twenties:

"And for every Fitzgerald Flapper of the twenties there
were countless fatigued and undernourished textile mill operators and migratory
fruit pickers and mining town and ghetto housewives who never knew the life of
Zelda Fitzgerald." (Noggle p.165)

1.3
The New Rich

The people that added the
"Roaring" to the twenties were the new rich that had climbed up the
social ladder and now lived in ostentation (the English call them "snobs").

1.3.1 Legal Sources of
Income

The two important presidents who
influenced the decade were Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. Both of them
were Republicans and they basically believed in "laissez faire" (Rand p.vii
& 141; DiBacco p.514) that is French for "let (us) do" and means that
government keeps its hands out of the economical developments. Harding's
philosophy was to exclusively support business, but never intervene in it
otherwise. He raised tariffs and lowered taxation of industry (cf. DiBacco
p.515). In consequence profit and productivity rose sharply from 1923 on (cf.
Sellers p.337f). When Harding died in 1923 Calvin Coolidge (who later won the
1924 election in a landslide) replaced him.
Coolidge once said "The business of America is
business" and accordingly, he left the economy to itself (called Open Market by
critical economists such as J. M. Keynes [cf. Brockhaus 1990, vol. 11
pp.654-656] and J. K. Galbraith [cf. Galbraith 1952; Brockhaus 1989, vol.8
p.90]). Productivity rose further and the (ohne Artikel) wealth
started to spread. The income was particularly spent on cars and new modern
electric appliances like washing machines and electric stoves (cf. De Long p.8).
Distributors of those appliances made fortunes, for example General
Electric.The effect on the stock market was
positive indeed, and numerous investors often made tremendous gains within few
months. In contrast to the established upper class
the new rich did not inherit their wealth but acquired it by themselves. This
myth "from rags to riches" (Thies p.586), the "American Dream" (Commager
pp.vii-xvii), was revived during this
decade.

1.3.2 Illegal Sources of
Income

The 18th Amendment
(Prohibition), ratified January 1919 under President Wilson, and the Volstead
Act of October 1919 -providing for the enforcement of the amendment- prohibiting
the manufacture, sale, transportation, or possession of intoxicating beverages
also had a severe impact on society (cf. DiBacco p.530).
The law was supported by representatives from
rural areas, the Methodist church and especially the Anti-Saloon League (cf.
DiBacco p.531; Sellers p.331). The latter proclaimed "Now for an era of clean
living and clear thinking!" when the Volstead Act had been passed (cf. DiBacco
p.530). Their hope was soon "liquefied" by
millions of people who would not give up their drinking habits: the urban high
society of the twenties had frequent parties where they drank alcohol, listened
to jazz music and danced the Charleston whereas the importance (and influence)
of religion declined. Women, known as Flappers,
appeared in countless numbers (cf. DiBacco p. 528), independently having parties
like before only men did ( so plötzlich sind die Frauen ja auch nicht
erschienen: umformulieren, z.B. –A typical woman of that class was
called “flapper”; she wore short skirts and even trousers and spent
her time having parties,) thus, in the opinion of the conservative rural
areas, undermining American morality. The law
could not be enforced since the capacity of the prisons was insufficient for
some extra forty to fifty thousand people who broke this law every year (DiBacco
p.531). "As a result, violators were often let off with little or no punishment"
(DiBacco p.531). The many people that loved to
drink alcohol naturally created a huge demand that was met to a high degree by
large illegal organisations known as gangs that sold the liquor in so-called
"speakeasies" - illegal bars that sprang up everywhere- but also by home-made
liquor brewed by ordinary people. The big
organisations like the world famous Chicago gang, with Al Capone as boss
smuggled alcohol across the borders of Mexico and Canada (cf. DiBacco p530f).
This business became known as "bootlegging" and it was very profitable.
Thousands made enormous amounts of money, for example the "Chicago gang took in
several million dollars a month during its heyday" (DiBacco p.531).
Most notoriously, the Italian, Irish and Polish
immigrants (and their second generations, already born in the United States)
dominated this illegal business with their huge (catholic) family clans. Used to
drinking some alcoholic beverages with meals at home (mostly wine and beer) as
part of their culture, they sold the more profitable stronger spirits (whiskey,
gin, rum and similar distilled products) to their mostly White Anglo Saxon
Protestant (WASP, a sociological stereotype) clients (cf. Brockhaus 1992,
vol.17, p.526: Prohibition).A prominent
illustration of the American Dream of an Irish catholic family are the Kennedys:
Joseph P. Kennedy (1888-1969) "banker, ship owner, speculator (indeed an alcohol
smuggler in his beginnings) and politician" and his famous sons John Fitzgerald
(1917-1963), Robert Francis (1925-1968) and Edward Moore (*1932) (Brockhaus
1990, vol.11 p.596: Kennedy; Davis)

All these
"rich people" had one thing in common: they were preoccupied with making "their"
money and "their" profit. This egoistic and materialistic attitude was probably
the most widespread in the whole decade (it would later be punished by the Great
Depression) and it did not help the poor out of their misery (cf. McElvaine
p.42)(Roosevelt's "Great Deal" was a later act of solidarity, missing in the
twenties).

2. Social Classes as
Described in the Novel "The Great Gatsby"

2.1
The Established Rich

Tom and Daisy Buchanan
represent the established rich.Daisy Fay is from a
very rich family in Louisville, Kentucky. To her house belonged "the largest of
the banners and the largest of the lawns" (Fitzgerald p.59) and at the age of
eighteen she already had her own car, not a cheap Ford Model-T (the best selling
car of the days) but a roadster.Tom's family is
even richer: his wealth appears to Nick as a representative of the middle class
is unimaginable, (umstellen: To Nick as a representative of the middle
class Tom´s wealth appears to be downright
unimaginable.)

"His Family was enormously wealthy- even in college his
freedom with money was a matter for reproach- but now he'd left Chicago and come
East in a fashion that took your breath away; for instance, he'd brought down a
string of polo ponies from Lake Forrest. It was hard to realise that a man in my
own generation was wealthy enough to do that."(Fitzgerald p.10 l.19ff).

In the course of Jordan Baker's description of
the Buchanans' life it becomes clear that neither of them has ever had an
occupation. After their marriage they "started off on a three months' trip to
the South Seas" (Fitzgerald p.61 l.1f). A little later they moved "for no
particular reason" (Fitzgerald p.10 l.20) to France for one year. With a
full-time employment this would not have been
possible.Nick also gives a very fitting
description of their lifestyle after their return to the United
States,

"..., and then drifted here and there unrestfully
wherever people played polo and were rich together" (Fitzgerald p.10
l.21f)These aspects
make them to (ohne to )stereotypical members of the "leisure"
class.

(hier oder in der conclusion
würde ich noch kurz erwähnen, mit welcher impliziten Wertung
Fitzgerald diese Klasse darstellt; z.B. From the way how Tom and Daisy are
presented in the novel the reader gets the impression that Fitzgerald implicitly
criticizes this class for its carelessness and its irresponsible use of wealth.
– evtl. hier Nicks Einschätzung vom Ende zitieren: They were careless
people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed things and creatures and then
retreated back into their money or their vast
carelessness)

2.2 The Poor

Fitzgerald describes the situation of the
impoverished by the character of George Wilson, the owner of a garage in the
"Valley of Ashes". The "Valley of Ashes" symbolises the hopeless situation of
its few inhabitants (cf. Frausing p.34). There is no other colour in their
surroundings but the melancholic grey which already influenced Wilson whom Nick
describes as "spiritless" and "anaemic" (Fitzgerald p.23
l.32).That Wilson is poor is obvious, his garage
is in awful shape and he has no business at all. The only car in the garage is -
as well as everything else in the valley - already covered with dust (cf.
Fitzgerald p.23); this car is of no more use to
him.Wilson is desperate to buy the car Tom
intended to sell in order to finally earn some money (which he needs to move
West because he suspects Myrtle of having a relationship) (eher: of having
an affair with another man) but Tom uses the car only as a pretext to
see Myrtle. Wilson had set up his garage when the
valley was not yet deserted -the remaining paint on the huge advertising screen
of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg indicates that those great days had been a reality.
His idea to make money by repairing and selling cars was actually promising in
those days because there had never been such a huge demand for automobiles
before and due to Henry Ford's assembly line the required supply of cars was
also provided for: From 1921 to 1923 sales rose from 1.5 million to 3.5 million
cars per year (cf. DiBacco p.518). These figures
may lead to the conclusion that the number of accidents rose likewise (which
certainly must have been the case) and thus garage owners had their hands full,
but for the ill-fated Wilson rules do not apply. This makes Wilson to (to
weglassen) a typical looser nur mit einem o: loser of the
decade: during all these years of rising economy many people had to give up
their dream of wealth inspired by those "Great
Gatsbies".

2.3 The New
Rich

James Gatz alias Jay Gatsby is an example
of those new rich in the United States of the twenties that acquired
their wealth by illegal means. When James Gatz was
young he already wanted to escape from the farming life and his parents. To
achieve this he wrote a schedule (Fitzgerald p.123) in order to develop a
successful but rigid structure that would - through hard work and an ascetic way
of life - lead him out of his misery. He changed this morally right path when he
returned from war.Daisy, ergänzen: the
woman he had fallen in love with, (who) stands for all the beauty and the
glamour of the world, but she married another man while he fought the
Germans in Europe. Gatsby imagines that he could win her back if he could attain
her social status .In order to achieve this a quick source of money is required.
Um den langen Einschub im nächsten Satz
zu vermeiden,umformen: This source was provided by Meyer Wolfsheim, an
influential gangster boss who fixed ... (bis:) betting shops. Meyer Wolfsheim
“made him”, that means he got Gatsby involved in the illegal
business.

Meyer Wolfsheim, an
influential gangster boss (he "fixed the World's Series back in 1919"
[Fitzgerald p.58 l.23] which was a huge scandal: players of the favourite team
were accused of having intentionally played bad in order to gain profit out of
their own insider status at the betting shops) "made him" (Fitzgerald p.122)
that means he got him involved in the illegal
business.Tom reveals that Gatsby and Wolfsheim had
sold alcohol in their drug stores and manipulated betting games (cf. Fitzgerald
p.97 l.36ff; p.98 l.1ff). Not only Tom's investigation and the bar stocked "with
gins and liquors" (Fitzgerald p.35 l.21) indicate Gatsby's involvement in
illegal affairs but also his harsh reply when Nick asks him what business he was
in,

"That's my affair" (Fitzgerald p.69 l.27). (nicht
separat einrücken)

His bootlegging
activities and his materialistic attitude (that is underlined by his belief
"that money will buy back the girl" [Hoffman p.133 last line]) identify him as
typical of the 1920s. The extravagant parties, his admirable car as well as his
enormous house that resembles a French château add to that
impression.However not representative of the
decade is his sober attitude towards alcohol (he rarely drinks because he saw
how the liquor "liquefied" Dan Cody's self-control [cf. Fitzgerald p.76 l.17;
l.27) but that is an exception.Therefore his
lifestyle is prototypical of the enduring image of the Roaring Twenties until
today.He has realised the American dream for himself; he has become the
hero of a "from rags-to-riches-story" (cf. Thies p.586) but in a way that puts
aside all moral limitations.evtl hier
ergänzen, dass abgesehen davon, dass er ein typischer Vertreter seiner
Klasse ist, seine romantische Motivation, Daisy zurückzugewinnen, sein ganz
indivueller Grund ist (auch hier
würde ich noch einen Satz zur Wertung ergänzen, z.B. For the reader it
is difficult to say whether Fitzgerald admires or criticizes Gatsby. On the one
hand you can feel the fascination with the glamour of Gatsby´s world, but
on the other hand you realize that his wealth is based on fraud and petty
crime.

Conclusion

In order to test my hypothesis I intended to produce
evidence (Ändern: tohighlight ) three main
topics.First (Komma) the existence
of the established rich in the decade and the Buchanans'
affiliation to this class.Second
(Komma) the existence of the poor in the twenties
and Wilson's affiliation to this class. Third
(Komma) the existence of a new rich category (besser: of a
class ofnewly rich people) clearly different from the
established rich with Gatsby as a prototype to (statt to : of)
this class.I found evidence and analogies for the
existence of all three groups in fact and fiction by using information and
quotes from traditional history books, encyclopaedias and recent
webpages.Furthermore I was able to confirm the
affiliation of the characters to the described three
classes.Tom and Daisy Buchanan inherited all their
wealth, they never had to earn a dime by themselves, hence they personify the
established high society.Wilson is very
unfortunate and fails to fulfil his individual American Dream: he thus belongs
to the poor citizens.Gatsby intended to work hard
for his wealth but then acquired it rapidly by all illegal means consequently he
belongs to the new rich of the age.All my
conclusions are supported by quotes and historical facts. My initial hypothesis
is verified. hier würde ich als
Abschluss so in etwa formulieren: Of
course a novel like “The Great Gatsby” is not a social study made up
in order to present sociological facts; it definitely has layers of meaning
beyond the social aspect. But as the novel is set in the 1920s it reflects the
social reality of its time in a certain way and therefore it can be regarded as
a social document where class definitely plays a strong
role.

In my opinion social class plays a
definitely strong role - both in fact and fiction - during the Roaring Twenties.
(den Satz dann
weglassen)